Promotion and advertising through the Internet may be performed by a publisher (e.g., search engines, email marketing, social networks, in-app advertisement, and/or other publishing channels). The publisher may charge advertisers based on a responsive action taken by a potential customer on the publisher's electronic platform (e.g., website, app, etc.). For example, the responsive action may be a “click” on the advertisement. The advertiser may be charged based on the number of clicks on the advertisement displayed on the electronic platform (e.g., “click-through advertising”).
However, sometimes the potential customer may not purchase a good or service on the electronic platform (or mobile app) of the advertiser within a threshold amount of time. When this happens, the potential customer may be referred to as a “non-converting” customer. In the past, analyzing the behavior of the non-converting customer may not be possible. Furthermore, determining which publishers have the highest frequency of non-converting customers may not be possible. For this reason, the advertiser may unnecessarily spend money on publishers that have a high percentage of non-converting customers because they are unable to determine characteristics needed to exclude those publishers (and users) which do not have a high percentage of non-conversion.
Conversion may also be a point at which a recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action. Conversion may be people responding to a call-to-action. Conversion may be people visiting a website (a publishing channel for advertisements) to take an action the advertiser wants them to take. Opening an email (another publishing channel for advertisements) may be a conversion. Clicking on the call-to-action link inside the email may be another conversion. Going to the landing page and filling out a registration form and/or reading a content may be a conversion. Buying a product may be the ultimate conversion.
An attribution model may be the rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and/or conversions is assigned to touchpoints and/or other factors in conversion paths. An Attribution Model may be a mechanism that may allow one to place a numerical value on advertising mediums (e.g. aggregators, publishers, publishing channels for advertisements) or individual publishers. The larger the numerical value, the more of an effect that this particular entity may have on conversions within a campaign from a holistic perspective.
Attribution models may analyze impressions, clickstreams, touch points within those clickstreams, a quick succession of clicks, etc. Some attribution models may fail to take statistical behavior of real marketing data into account and/or may fail to exploit powerful regression analysis tools of real marketing data. In addition, many attribution models may fail to consider non-conversions, considering only what might have worked but not what may not work. Many attribution models may fail to consider/identify the shining stars, poorest performers, and the middle of the road advertising channels.
Marketers may need to plan a marketing campaign within a certain time window with a limited budget. Marketers may need to consider the cost of making and placing advertisements in various marketing channels and/or publishing channels for advertisement (e.g. traditional channels such as sponsorship, billboards, printed matters, posters, newspaper, magazine, television, radio, shopping malls, airport, and new media such as social media, digital and mobile websites, email blast based on certain mailing lists, web-based email platforms such as Gmail™ Hotmail™, Yahoo! Mail™, communication systems such as Google Hangout™, Adobe Connect™, Skype™, Cisco WebEx, Citrix GoToMeeting™, Fuze™, search engines such as Google™ and Bing™, social media such as Facebook™, Twitter™, Whatapps™, Tumblr™, Instagram™, and Snapchat™, content web sites such as YouTube™ and Vimeo™, digital magazines, blogs, games, news pages, special interest web sites, direct sale/reseller web sites, etc.), available time slots and pricing of the marketing channels, the effectiveness of the marketing channels (publishing channels for advertisements) in reaching various segments of targeted customers (e.g. young people with age ranging from 13 to 18 with special interest such as sports or fashion, middle aged male approaching retiring age with retirement needs, or stay-at-home housewife with young children, etc.) and in generating conversions in a certain timing of the year (e.g. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, New Year, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, spring break, summer holiday, back-to-school, graduation, etc.) and under certain marketing conditions (NBA Final, NCAA Final, NFL Final, NHL Final, Wimbleton Final, World Cup, Olympic games, Election, etc.).
Marketers may need an attribution model that may assist them in assessing and/or deciding which marketing channels to engage for a marketing campaign. Marketers may need an attribution model that may give unbiased, consistent scores of the publishing channels for advertisements that reflect statistical behavior in past and present data (historical data).